Colin Savage
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
human oversight, because it's going to be producing things for humans. If the end consumer, the end result, the destination of whatever is being done, the person who has strengths and weaknesses, all those kind of things, personal needs that need to be addressed, all that kind of stuff, then it can't be the AI tool or tool You can't address that fast enough and more efficiently enough.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I gave a speech at a conference half a month ago, and I was introducing a gentleman and his company that do data analysis and power efficient. And I got up on stage, had two things to admit. The first one is that I thought about printing off my speech and giving and reading it to the audience. And then the second one is I used AI to write my speech.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
But it took me an hour going through all the prompts, all the things I wanted it to say, changing my voice, changing my tone, style, being punchy, all those kind of things. It took me an hour. Because I have the experience, tools, and the skills to be able to write it. You said we've learned this over time. I could have just done it and it would have been finished in 15 minutes.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
If we do not continue to encourage people to build human intelligence that is supplemented or complemented by artificial intelligence tools and other ones, then all we get is something that's artificial. And I don't know about you and others, but I can tell when something's not genuine.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
If it's artificial sweetener, an artificial voice, an annoying robocall, whatever else, you can smell a steak right away. And I don't think that's ever going to go away from humanity. On the flip side or on another angle, I often get asked to go and talk to university class. And we were talking about economic development, which is my focus today in my room.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
And we got on to AI and we had people ask me questions. Why would we use you? Why can't I just use AI to do everything? And I thought, okay, you could, you certainly could do that. But what is the purpose of generating it? Like why, if you're just going to generate a whole lot of paper, why would anyone on the other end want to read it?
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
We have to think about what is the ultimate goal of what we're trying to achieve. And then we delved into other things about what about students using AI cheat and this and that and the other. We'll put it this way. If you're a high school student and you use AI to write your essay, you get it. If you're a university student and you use AI to write your thesis, you get kicked out of school.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
If you are working as an analyst for a bank and you use AI to write your entire investment perspective or other people that put money into something and you put that out there, you've committed fraud. And you're moving up the scale of what the penalty is for not using human intelligence, which we all have and we all value, which is all important.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
The other factor to add to this, to then go back to you, is if the level that we're going up, the way to counter that is to make people do things person to person. So if I have somebody that generates a resume on AI and all the things they've done and the way they speak and the level of, of knowledge of the thing in the information doesn't match or exceed, I know they're, they're faking it.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
So I know they're not ready to do it. They will be called out. So it begins the authenticity here, the difference between artificial, which is in the intelligence and authentic. And I think that for human intelligence wins.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I'm currently working in our own organization, albeit on my own right, and then with others to try to figure out their AI strategy. And again, to use your coin, create human intelligence. I was just scribbling on a piece of paper here, I think.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
That we made up this morning, figured out what the piece was for me, which is, I believe now, and you've given me the theorem, human intelligence and artificial intelligence will create authentic, enhanced knowledge and value. So I've been in search, trying to figure out a way to pair the two together. And the reality is that's now what we're able to do.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
If we can take the human, we can take the artificial and supplement it. We're creating, we're maintaining the authenticity. We're enhancing the knowledge and all together we're growing the value. So it's not gonna be one or the other. They're only providing half of the potential value that we could deliver here.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
Because it's what I'm trying to do when I talk to people for introducing AI tools into their business. So your point is more about what is it, what, not just the problem you're trying to overcome, but what are the extension you're trying to create? Where are you trying to attend things? We have great people. You have great people in your company.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
How do you make them better at what they can do with it?
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
Lifelong learning is an outdated concept in that it lacks focus for some people, whereas skill stacking is a little more concentrated and it will help you really build a piece. But again, it's not going to be specific in an area, but you can apply it across a swath of area and it'll really help you advance your career and advance whatever you want to do to be a standout kind of person.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I agree. Yeah. You, you have brought the other hand that I'm not going to say that I forgot. But what I would add to what you're saying, and it's way before in the skill stacking, I differentiate between calling the person and calling the professional all the time. So skill stacking, those are skills stacked for my coaching.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
Calling the person, that's where lifelong learning for me exists and always will. And so I'm very clear on what's the differentiator. Because what you can do is if you're people like us or those listening that are like us, if you've got a whole crazy team,
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
horizon of areas that you're interested in and you've read about, studied, done whatever to build up knowledge, it can be impossible to connect all the dots and make them all skip. I love reading modern African history. I have three shelves of books in my house that are all about the Democratic Republic of the Congress. I am never going to use that, at least not now.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
Oh, I got to go get that PhD in writing. Or I need to go in this thing that I've been invested in for a long time and I enjoy reading about and it is a form of learning. Doesn't need to be something that I'm going to incorporate into my work life. And I purposely keep it separate. And that's the same thing.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
The musical instruments that happen to be gathered can bust, unfortunately, in the back of my room. Those are also skills that I'm learning throughout my life just for my own enjoyment. And I'm totally with you on the law of the instrument, right? If everything, if you've got a hammer and you're good at it, then it will look like a needle.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I sit on a number of groups where we support startups and tech founders and entrepreneurs. And the drive to just leap to the solution, because I think I can sell a widget to somebody rather than understanding to your point, like, is this actually a problem or is this a set up or something else? It just drives me nuts.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
And so we're just going to end up with now the toolkit is going to have 7,000 tools, 6,800 of which I don't know how to use, and 50 that are actually useful for me to figure out any kind of a dilemma that I'm approaching. I think, yeah, I think you've done a good job of reminding me that Maybe the lifelong learning thing should be just for life.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
And the skills that should be where we focus on potentially getting the right kind of multi-skilled person who, to your point, doesn't just look down and build a tool, but is able to interact with others, is able to be empathetic, show emotional intelligence, all those kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
And I think maybe sometimes get sharp to the side over the let's build the technical experience, skill ourselves up with. Now I know not just C++, but I also know all of these other JavaScript and other kind of software so I can build my own AI model. Let's go, right?
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
That's a fantastic and a fascinating copy. I'm starting now because I'm not a very quiet person, often to my detriment, but I'm starting now to get people asking, Hey, let's see, you're doing this stuff in particularly generative AI. I know that I'm very clear that I'm not a person. I don't build these things. I don't know the computer science behind it. I'm purely a practitioner of the tools.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I get people asking a lot, hey, could you do a short little LinkedIn learning course for 30 minutes on the top 10 degenerative AI tools or anything of this? I'm all for it. I think it's a good idea. But what I often find too is the people that are asking me or those that are very early on in their technical journey of learning. So they're maybe late adopters, let's call them.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
They just want a silver bullet. They want, oh, what's the one tool I can use, we can do everything. And I have to constantly pull back and I have to remind them all, AI is like anything else. It's going to be a combination of tools. It's going to be interdisciplinary.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
So you're going to need not just an understanding of the AI tools and the skills that are required to use those tools, but you're going to need to know, you're going to need to understand strategy, how business development skills work. You're going to need to know how human resources, the team leadership, all these kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
You're going to need to know all of the soft skills that are always going to be fundamental and important. And then how does these, how does a MIT of your AI toolkit help you in individual instance? And for example, right now I'm working with a human resources consulting company. We don't really know how then what you could do is that you use three, three or four different tools.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
You could help the company build its own GPT. feed it with its own policies. You could build a tool for HR professionals that said, here's where all our policies are, here's where all of our templates are.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
So instead of reading through 400 pages of documentation, you can use tools to then figure out, identify the policy that they may have to contravene, figure out some of the path forward, and then put together a plan that you as a professional are then bringing to review with your expertise and those interdisciplinary skills, and then present to senior leadership and say, this is what happened.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
This is what I think we should do. I need to be the underlying evidence for what I want. And you'll be able to do that in a day. rather than taking two weeks. So there's, I think there's a way forward, but I am constantly surprised by how, how people with limited technology in particular experience and expertise, they, they just want a silver bullet.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
They just want what's the one tool that's gonna do everything. Nothing. There's no one tool that's going to do it all. And in fact, if you think they're the case, then you need to go back and we actually need to think about what exactly are you trying to solve? It's a little bit of like maybe sort of expectation resetting.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
And then let's start at the beginning with what these tools are and explain to people how they work in concert and not. to build the best thing for you. And all of that's going to have to be tailored, which as you said before, if we're always building tool for everything that's not yet a problem without understanding the symptom, then we're just adding more tools and making more distractions.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
It's a wasted effort, right?
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I love this idea of human intelligence, Vince, and I'm going to steal it and share it with the rest of the world. Chief Brook, I've always referencing you because I think that is incredibly important and it will always be.
Chief Change Officer
#172 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part Three
I'm not a, we all see what leaders in the aerospace and other things say, oh, you're all in three years, like the guy doing all of this work that he was doing in five years, like There's a lot of rudimentary activities and repetitive stuff that AI might be able to take over and do more efficiently, more rapidly, 24 hours a day, whatever, but it's always going to require
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
If the end consumer, the end result, the destination of whatever is being done, the person who had strengths and weaknesses, all those kind of things, personal needs that need to be addressed, all that kind of stuff, then it can't be the AI tool or tool that You can't address that fast enough and more efficiently enough.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
I gave a speech at a conference half a month ago, and I was introducing a gentleman and his company that do data analysis and power efficient intelligence. And I got up on stage, had two things to admit. The first one is that I thought about printing off my speech and giving and reading it to the audience. And then the second one is I used AI to write my speech.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
But it took me an hour going through all the prompts, all the things I wanted it to say, changing my voice, changing my tone, style, being punchy, all those kind of things. It took me an hour because... I have the experience, tools and the skills to be able to write it. You said we've learned this over time. I could have just done it and it would have been finished in 15 minutes, right?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
If we do not continue to encourage people to build human intelligence that is supplemented or complemented by artificial intelligence tools and other ones, then all we get is something that's artificial. And I don't know about you and others, but I can tell when something's not genuine.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
If it's artificial sweetener, an artificial voice, an annoying robocall, whatever else, you can smell a fake right away. And I don't think that's ever going to go away from humanity. On the flip side or on another angle, I often get asked to go and talk to university class. And we were talking about economic development, which is my focus today in my room.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And we got onto AI and we had people ask me, Why would we use you? Why can't I just use AI to do everything? And I thought, okay, you could, you certainly could do that, but what is the purpose of generating it? Like why, if you're just going to generate a whole lot of paper, why would anyone on the other end want to read it?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
We have to think about what is the ultimate goal of what we're trying to achieve. And then we delved into other things about what about students using AI to cheat and this and that and the other. We'll put it this way. If you're a high school student and you use AI to write your essay, you get it. If you're a university student and you use AI to write your thesis, you get kicked out of school.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
If you are working as an analyst for a bank and you use AI to write your entire investment perspective or other people that put money into something and you put that out there, you've committed fraud. And you're moving up the scale of what the penalty is for not using human intelligence, which we all have and we all value, which is all important.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
The other factor to add to this, to then go back to you, is the level that we're going up, the way to counter that is to make people do things person to person. So if I have somebody that generates a resume on AI and all the things they've done, and the way they speak and the level of knowledge of the thing in the information doesn't match or exceed, I know they're faking it.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
So I know they're not ready to do it. They will be called out. So again, it's the authenticity here. The difference between artificial, which is in the intelligence, and authentic. And I think that's where human intelligence wins.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
I'm currently working in our own organization, albeit on my own right, and then with others to try to figure out their AI strategy. And again, to use your coin to create human intelligence, I was just scribbling on a piece of paper here, I think.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
That we made up this morning, figured out what the piece was for me, which is, I believe now, and you've given me the theorem, human intelligence and artificial intelligence will create authentic, enhanced knowledge and value. So I'd been in search, trying to figure out a way to pair the two together. And the reality is that's now what we're able to do.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
If we can take the human, we can take the artificial and supplement it. We're creating, we're maintaining the authenticity. We're enhancing the knowledge and all together we're growing the value. So it's not gonna be one or the other. They're only providing half of the potential value that we could deliver here.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
That's what I'm trying to do when I talk to people for introducing AI tools into their business. So your point is more about what is it, what, not just the problem you're trying to overcome, but what are the extension you're trying to create? Where are you trying to attend? We have great people. You have great people in your company. How do you make them better at what they can do with it?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
Lifelong learning is an outdated concept in that it lacks focus for some people, whereas skill stacking is a little more concentrated and it will help you really build the keys. But again, it's not going to be specific in an area, but you can apply it across a swath of area and it'll really help you advance your career and advance whatever you want to do to be a standout kind of person.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
I agree. Yeah, you have brought the other hand that I'm not going to say that I forgot. But what I would add to what you're saying, and it's way before in the skill stacking, I differentiate between calling the person and calling the professional all the time. So skill stacking, those are skills stacked for my person. Calling the person, that's where lifelong learning for me did and always will.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And so I'm very clear on what's the differentiator. Because what you can do is if you're people like us or those listening that are like us, if you brought a whole crazy idea horizon of areas that you're interested in and you've read about, studied, done whatever to build up knowledge, it can be impossible to connect all the dots and make them all skip. I love reading modern African history.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
I have three shelves of books in my house that are all about the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I am never going to use that, at least not now. Oh, I got to go get that PhD in writing. Or I need to go and this thing that I've been invested in for a long time and I enjoy reading about and it is a form of learning, doesn't need to be something that I'm going to incorporate into my work life.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And I purposely keep it separate. And that's the same thing of the musical instrument that happened to be gathered in bust, unfortunately, in the back of my room. Those are also skills that I'm learning throughout my life just for my own enjoyment. And I'm totally with you on the law of the instrument, right?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
If everything, if you've got a hammer and you're good at it, then it'll look like a needle. I sit on a number of groups where we support startups and tech founders and entrepreneur. And the drive to just leap to the solution, because I think I can sell a widget to somebody rather than understanding to your point, like, is this actually a problem or is this set over something else?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
It just drives me nuts. And so we're just going to end up with now the toolkit is going to have 7,000 tools, 6,800 of which I don't know how to use, and 50 that are actually useful for me to figure out any kind of a dilemma that I'm approaching. I think, yeah, I think you've done a good job of reminding me that Maybe the lifelong learning thing should be just for life.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And the guilt that should be where we focus on potentially getting the right kind of multi-skilled person who, to your point, doesn't just look down and build a tool, but is able to interact with others, is able to be empathetic, show emotional intelligence, all those kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And I think maybe sometimes get sharp to the side over the let's build the technical experience and skill ourselves up with. Now I know not just C++, but I also know all of these other JavaScript and other kind of software so I can build my own AI model. Let's go, right?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
That's a fantastic and a fascinating comment. I'm starting now, because I'm not a very quiet person, often to my detriment, but I'm starting now to get people asking, Hey, I see you're doing this stuff in particularly generative AI. I'm very clear that I'm not a person. I don't build these things. I don't know the computer science behind it. I'm purely a practitioner of the tools.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
I get people asking a lot, Hey, could you do a short little LinkedIn learning course for 30 minutes on, or do you have any of the top 10 degenerative AI tools or anything of this? I'm all for it. I think it's a good idea. But what I often find too is the people that are asking me or those that are very early on in their technical journey of learning.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
So they're maybe late adopters, let's call them. They just want a silver bullet. They want, oh, what's the one tool I can use that can do everything? And I have to constantly pull back and I have to remind them all, AI is like anything else. It's going to be a combination of tools. It's going to be interdisciplinary.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
So you're going to need not just an understanding of the AI tools and the skills that are required to use those tools, but you're going to need to know, you're going to need to understand strategy, how big the development skills were. You're going to need to know how human resources, the team leadership, all these kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
You're going to need to know all of the soft skills that are always going to be fundamental and important. And then how does these, how does a MIT of your AI toolkit help you in individual instance? And for example, right now I'm working with a human resources consulting company.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
We don't really know how AI could then, what you could do is if you use three, three or four different tool, you could help the company build its own GPT. feed it with its own policies. You could build a tool for HR professionals that said, here's where all our policies are. Here's where all of our templates are.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
So instead of reading through 400 pages of documentation, you can use tools to then figure out, identify the policy that they may have to help or contravene, figure out some of the path forward, and then put together a plan that you as a professional are then bringing to review.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
with your expertise and those interdisciplinary skills, and then present to senior leadership and say, this is what happened. This is what I think we should do. And this would be the underlying evidence for what I want. And you'll be able to do that in a day. rather than taking two weeks.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
So there's, I think there's a way forward, but they am constantly surprised by how, how people with limited technology in particular experience and expertise, they, they just want a silver bullet. They just want what's the one tool that's gonna do everything. Nothing. There's no one tool that's going to do it all.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And in fact, if you think they're the case, then you need to go back and we actually need to think about what exactly are you trying to solve? It's a little bit of like maybe sort of expectation resetting. And then let's start at the beginning with what these tools are and explain to people how they work in concert and not. to build the best thing for you.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
And all that's going to have to be tailored, which, as you said before, if we're always building tool for everything that's not yet a problem without understanding the symptom, then we're just adding more tools and making more distractions.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
It's a wasted effort, right?
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
I love this idea of human intelligence, Vince, and I'm going to steal it and share it with the rest of the world. Chief Brooke, I've always referencing you because I think that is incredibly important and it will always be. I'm not a, we all see what leaders in the aerospace and other things say, oh, you're all in three years.
Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
Like the guy doing all of this work that he was doing in five years, like Okay, fine. There's a lot of rudimentary activities and repetitive stuff that AI might be able to take over and do more efficiently, more rapidly, 24 hours a day, whatever. But it's always going to require time. human oversight, because it's going to be producing things for human.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And the first one was we always had a room in our house that was more our study than den. It was a room where there was a lot of books. A lot of things on the wall, inspirational quotes, all that kind. And my parents often argued about who got to use the big desk and do their writing and do their research and whatever else. And on one of the walls were all of their degrees. So that's it.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
From a very early age, I'd look up at a wall and I'd see lots of people with paper and very nice brains. Oh, what are those? Well, that's my degree in education. So that was the first. And then the second one was, and this came more from a grandparent who actually didn't have a lot of education. He would relay to us as a little kid all the time. You know what?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Like somebody can, they can take away your house. They can take away your possessions. They can take away your money. They can take your family. They can take your health. They can do all that kind of stuff. The only thing that they cannot take away from you is your education. And so I still believe that. I still believe that's very true.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And so anyway, from a long, from my early age with those kind of two things, I It was education is important, right? And you should constantly be learning, right? And I didn't know at the time that you have to constantly be learning. Now it's related to keeping technology and technological advances and things like generative AI that I'm now studying.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
It was more like you just should keep learning all the time. My parents were very flexible and it didn't really matter what. But it was important that it was with somebody who knows it, so there was an expert. And at the end, there was going to be some kind of written comment. There was going to be a degree, a diploma, letters behind your name, whatever it is. So that's lifelong learning.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
For me, there's continually learning from established institutions, programs, gathering up the diploma and other things. And really, the area doesn't matter. Lifelong learning, learn whatever. But lifelong learning is, I think it's an outdated concept and particularly because it just lacks spoken. I may be an example of that.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And that's where I studied English literature, I studied philosophy, I studied liberal art. Then I went to Japan, and then I did a master's degree in modern Japanese literature. Okay, there's a little bit of a connection there with literature, but different cultures, different languages. Then I go to the UK, and I do a master's degree in social anthropology in South D.C. Learning Burmese.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
I lived in lots of countries, so that's where the interesting cultures, the people come from. I can back up again and find that I can connect them, but they didn't really have a focus on building expertise. They were disjointed variety of individual level or understanding and mastery of skills and discipline. And then I had to actually build pathways to connect them.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And one of the pathways that helped me do that was doing an MBA at Durham in the UK. And so I connected social anthropology, I connected multi-generational stuff, and I connected performance management for business to figure out a metric to understand how to support multi-generational organizations with different levels of performance management and guidance. But it wasn't purposeful.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Fast forward a few years. Now we're into the pandemic. I'm living here in Canada. I'm sitting like most of us were in our own little home office. I'm going through things like LinkedIn learning in other places. And I'm noticing connectivity between, hey, what have I learned?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
how to be better at doing online presentation and whatnot from the short course, then I can use the skills that I learned as a lecturer to maybe coach it in-house in my company. So everybody will be better at sitting in virtual meetings. Hey, there's this new performance management tool online because we're all living remotely, so we're worried about efficiency and all of those kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
How could I learn the technology behind it to maybe adapt it so we can add it to the practices we have in comp that are still a little bit traditional? Paper, baby. Building and building and building. So what happened was, I'm not entirely sure that stacking is the right word. I think it's more like staircase.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And you've got overlapped half or a little bit more, but then you branch off into new areas. But you're constantly building it up. And now to round off my comment, now I'm learning for the last two years generative AI and the blurred large language model development. I've learned prompt engineering, all those kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
But now that's actually connecting back in like almost reverse skills tracking with me. clear thought and clear writing. If you're not a good writer and you're not good at generating good writing, good step-by-step way to do something to build the proper prompt, it can't do what you want. It doesn't deliver what you would like.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And so you'll spend extra time tweaking it and tailoring stuff to finally get to what you would like. But if you were good at writing, which comes from spending a lot of time in literature, And you're good at research, which helps you figure out the steps to be able to get the result you'd like.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Combining those and learning how and understanding how a generative AI in particular and prompt engineering, the skill that you need to do it, you're stacking those or you're staircasing all of those. And you're going to be able to generate way better results in generative AI and other things.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And more importantly, even with people being able to guide them through a process, you're going to get the results faster, which is better for everyone. Hopefully that's not a too roundabout way to get there.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
But I think, yeah, now lifelong learning is an outdated concept and then it lacks focus for some people where the skill stacking is a little more concentrated and it will help you really build the keys. But again, it's not going to be specific in an area, but you can apply it across
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
swath of area and it'll really help you advance your career and event whatever you want to do to be a standout kind of person.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
I agree. Yeah, you have brought the other hand that I'm not going to say that I forgot. But what I would add to what you're saying, and it's way before in the skill stacking, I differentiate between calling the person and calling the professional all the time. So skill stacking, those are skills back for my calling the person. That's where lifelong learning for me and always grow.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And so I'm very clear on what's the differentiator, because what you can do is if you're people like us, or those listening that are like us, if you've got a whole crazy horizon of areas that you're interested in and you've read about, studied, done whatever to build up knowledge, it can be impossible to connect all the dots and make them all skip. I love reading modern African history.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
I have three shelves of books in my house that are all about the Democratic Republic of the Congress. I am never going to use that, at least not now. Oh, I got to go get a PhD in writing. Or I need to go and this thing that I've been invested in for a long time and I enjoy reading about and it is a form of learning doesn't need to be something that I'm going to incorporate into my work life.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And I purposely keep it separate. And that's the same thing of the medical instrument that happened to be gathered in bust, unfortunately, in the back of my room. Those are also skills that I'm learning throughout my life just for my own enjoyment. And I'm totally with you on the law of the instrument, right?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
If everything, if you've got a hammer and you're good at it, then it'll look like a needle. I sit on a number of groups where we support startups and tech founders and entrepreneurs. And the drive to just leap to the solution, because I think I can sell a widget to somebody rather than understanding to your point, like, is this actually a problem or is this set over something else?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
It just drives me nuts. And so we're just going to end up with now the toolkit is going to have 7,000 tools, 6,800 of which I don't know how to use, and 50 that are actually useful for me to figure out any kind of a dilemma that I'm referring to. I think you've done a good job of reminding me that Maybe the lifelong learning thing should be just for life.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And the skill stacking should be where we focus on potentially getting the right kind of multi-skilled person who, to your point, doesn't just look down and build a tool, but is able to interact with others, is able to be empathetic, show emotional intelligence, all those kind of things.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And I think maybe sometimes get sharp to the side over the let's build the technical experience, skill ourselves up with. Now I know not just C++, but I also know all of these other JavaScript and other kind of software so I can build my own AI model. Let's go, right?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
One example is going to be a bit of a surprise to people because they will have read, potentially, how traditional this country is. And this is Japan. So I lived in Japan, as I mentioned, for quite a long time. And with the Japanese life insurance company, we're in Brazil. We're seeing something that's a bit unique. In Japan, one of the largest minorities are Yui. And they are people who...
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
travel to japan as youth they have access to visas and other things and they start their working life in japan so they're actually indoctrinated they learn working culture from being in japanese companies a lot of them and otherwise they learn things like hey life insurance is important you need to have it the discussion one how are we going to go build this idea and
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
What came about was I learned that change, individual, team, and otherwise, comes from doing a lot of promotion. So Japan is a lot about individual conversations to get support or get direction. Big organizations are great at providing that direction, but often indirect. You have to be a cute direction. So, hey, why don't we consider this? Why don't we do that?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
But also, it's measured and it's planned change. You can't just come up with an idea and throw it at people and get them to say yes or no. You've got to research your idea. This is the market size. These are the people. Look, they would buy. This is how it would benefit them if they stayed where they are or then when they moved back.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
This is how we could link a dovetail or a pipeline into getting new people in a new market we might make. So it took a lot of time, but I was very surprised and very proud that we actually managed to get this kind of a lead. I got support from lovely people within the organization. They provided their time to me. We moved ahead. It took two years, but the change did happen.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And it was actually a real shining example of just because you think a culture and a group of people are traditional in their practices doesn't mean they're averse to change. You just need to be, from that change addict thing we were talking about, Not willy-nilly, not, hey, let's just do it for the sake of doing it.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Be measured, be strategic, be researched in what you want to change, and then find the kind and supportive voices. And if you find enough of them, you'll get groundswell and you'll be able to do it. If you don't, maybe your idea really isn't that great. Maybe you need to go back to the drawing board.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
So learn to take the interest and the novelty and the energy that comes from potential change and have it fuel huge ideas that are really important. steps, fundamental steps to maybe make that change happen. And the flip side would be actually back here in Canada. I worked for a quite traditional marketing company. Probably if I tell you who it is, people will know right away.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
They brought me in as a change person. That's how I was recruited. Please come here. We know our industry is on the decline. We're not really entirely sure where to go with it. We've seen what you did in other places. We're eager to change. We want a chance where they use all the right words. They were very receptive to the idea before I moved in house.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
I got in there and I asked, do you want me to be disruptive? Would you like me to push new initiatives? Absolutely. This is what we want. And within a month of me doing that, we don't really like it. Or that was a little too much. The reality is they were a different kind of ad. They were hooked on a legacy of very high revenue and high profit margin.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And they weren't willing, they really weren't willing and they hadn't done the time to figure out, do we want to change? Are we willing to forego some of that to potentially make it somewhere else or maybe not? And even though they had all of the support, allegedly support from people above and their ownership and others, they were incredibly reluctant to do it.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
So I was sitting in a role where change was in my title, but I couldn't do anything. And I had tried, I had built up goodwill. I'd got some champions. I was doing everything that change management tells you to do. Pushing the needle here, scaling your time here. And for the time period that I was there, they were wholly unwilling to take it on.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And at a certain point I had to, you know what, it isn't going to work for me. I'm pushing the rock as ill as whatever the Greek do. And I'm not getting anywhere. And I'm being told two different stories. So we dig into it, which might have really been like an external push from other people. So we don't want to do it. And it ended up being a failure for myself.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And it's something that I had taken on and I accept. I learned a lot of really good lessons from it. And frankly, had some work with the wonderful people that were driven to do it. But when the entire organization has been dictated change, and not really trusting of the person who's supposed to pilot it, then it's not gonna happen.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
But in this instance, it's a little bit about, it's maybe less about the change addict thing, but learning of how that change grow, if that's a good word or change guide, which is all right, maybe we need to take a step back, figure out what is your definition of change? Is it collectively the same? Do we all think this is a good idea?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Okay, maybe we need to tailor it a little more specific and then move on from there. And that's hopefully where I am now and how I actually go about it a little bit more. There's a little bit less, less put on the gas, more, let's put the car in park for a second and let's have a talk. We'll drive a block down the road and then we're going to have another talk.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And that way we can get to the kind of, again, change that we're all trying to achieve. And back to that definition of six steps. It's not just keep that directed by the outside or financial reasons only. The whole way that we're going to evolve and change for the better.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
My neck is hurting from how much I'm nodding for your example. Because one of the reasons and one of the benefits that I've had is the partner that I'm with. And she's actually been my sage. She's been my guide. The example that you with somebody from China, one of you in the NBA, they're married. I have basically dragged my partner and then our kids together. around the world.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
It was only until sort of the last one or two times that I realized I need to sit down and I need to talk to her. I need to ask her, what are you, what do you think about it? It's not just me moving for a job and to be the traditional one at the time, but not anymore, but the breadwinner for Hubli. She has been the one that said, okay, so we're moving. All right, where are we moving?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And then hit the ground running. And it was only later on the last couple of times that I've asked and I'm concerned about this, or I'm not sure how that's going to work or what are we going to do in this thing? And a lot of the things she's done is really ground. Why we were going to go and move somewhere, why we were going to make a significant change in our lives.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
To your example, I'm going to take it on and then everything's going to be hunky-dory and we're all going to be happy. But they didn't know that they could voice it. And so now it's more like a collective. So now we're sitting around in Canada and we're thinking, so what's the next step?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
And my first step now is to go and talk to my two teenage sons and my wife and say, hey guys, what do you think about this? And the reality is, whatever our age is and wherever our life has taken us, They'll come up with questions and problems and scenarios, or that's a chant that's difficult. And you've got to be a little bit more soul-searching to figure out, is this really right for me?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Is this really what should happen? And if it doesn't, how is it going to go, and how can I deal with it as and where it goes?
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
Very recently, I found myself, and I think this also leads a little bit to my love for novelty. I don't think a day goes by where I don't find the topic that I go, hey, you know what? I should really study this. And then I go and I start to spend 10 minutes looking for universities where I could go and I could, I mean, and I don't know if I'm ever actually going to get over that practice.
Chief Change Officer
#264 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Two
But to talk to your specific comment about light law and learning to skill deckers. So I am the product to academic people. And so both of my parents were educators. They both were educators at all different levels. They were both academically inclined and so was our family. And it was ingrained in us very young in two ways.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Yeah, and I think, so there's, this is, that's a great question again, Vin, and I did some soul searching in it. I have worked in a number of, both the mainstream and odd cases of change in a variety of different countries and industries or divisions. Potentially, there's two things I would want to start off with, and those are some misconceptions, some common misconceptions I see about change.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And again, we're talking like in an organizational or a business or even a personal professional way. And the first one is we have these people and I support them. Embrace change. Embrace change. Embrace change. It's the same thing as like you're embracing change for success. And then how are we defining success?
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Is it simply a bunch of key performance indicators and some sales bigger than revenue? Is it just keeping people? Is it launching ourselves into a brand new space to be wildly successful? Is it keeping diets cool? There's a whole variety of different ways to do it and embracing change to success is fine, but don't do it just for the sake of success.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Because the true impact really come when you are, your guiding strategic and focus change. And that's a whole different arena with a lot of complicated parameters. And you asked me about some specific examples. So I think I've got two and I'm going to make them. Personal to me because change is personal.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
One example is going to be a bit of a surprise to people because they will have read, potentially, how traditional this country is. And this was Japan. So I lived in Japan, as I mentioned, for quite a long time. And then I worked with Japanese organizations for machines for an equally long period. And I found, yes, value and worth put on traditional practice. And that also varies across industry.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And lo and behold, I also worked in a very traditional industry, licensure. But from the outside, it does look like it's stuck. Practices are the same. They move along. So when I was working for one of the big organization, out and that, yeah, there wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of airtime given to, hey, why don't we try this?
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Or, hey, why don't we, why don't we consider something completely different? There was incremental change, change or introduction of new things. And then luck would have it, I ended up traveling to a developing market with senior people from that city and looked around and just started noticing dots and then thinking, hey, we could connect these dots. to make something unique.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And with a job like insurance company, we're in Brazil, we're seeing something that's a bit unique. In Japan, one of the largest minorities are young people and they are people who travel to Japan as youth. They have access to visas and other things, and they start their working life in Japan. So they're actually indoctrinated.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
They learn working culture from being in Japanese companies, a lot of them, and otherwise. They learn things like, hey, life insurance is important. You need to have it. The discussion went, how are we going to go build this business idea? What came about was I learned that change, individual, team, and otherwise, comes from doing a lot of promotion.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
So Japan is a lot about individual conversations to get support or get direction. Big organizations are great at providing that direction, but often indirect. You have to be a cute direction. So, hey, why don't we consider this? Why don't we do that? But also, it's measured and it's planned change. You can't just come up with an idea and throw it at people and get them to say yes or no.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
You've got to research your idea. This is the market size. These are the people. Look, they would buy. This is how it would benefit them if they stayed where they are. Or then when they moved back, this is how we could think. a dovetail or a pipeline into getting new people in a new market we might make.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
So it took a lot of time, but I was very surprised and very proud that we actually managed to get this kind of a lead.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
I got support from lovely people within the organization. They provided their time to me. We moved ahead. It took two years, but the change did happen. And it was actually a real shining example of just because you think a culture and a group of people are traditional in their practices doesn't mean they're averse to change.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
You just need to be, again, from that change addict thing we were talking about, Not willy-nilly, not, hey, let's just do it for the sake of doing it. Be measured, be strategic, be researched in what you want to change, and then find the kind and supportive voices. And if you find enough of them, you'll get groundswell and you'll be able to do it.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
If you don't, maybe your idea really isn't that great. Maybe you need to go back to the drawing board. So learn to take the interest and the novelty and the energy that comes from a potential change and have it fuel you to do the really important steps, the fundamental steps to maybe make that change happen. And the flip side would be actually back here in Canada.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
I worked for a quite traditional marketing company. Probably if I tell you who it is, people will know right away. They brought me in as a change person. That's how I was recruited. Please come here. We know our industry is on the decline. We're not really entirely sure where to go with it. We've seen what you did in other places. We're eager to change. We want a chance.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
They used all the right words. They were very receptive to the idea before I moved in-house. I got in there and I asked, do you want me to be disruptive? Would you like me to push new initiatives? Absolutely, if this is what we want. And within a month of me doing that, we don't really like it. Or that was a little too much. The reality is they were a different kind of ad.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
They were hooked on a legacy of very high revenue and high profit margin. And they weren't willing, they really weren't willing, and they hadn't done the time to figure out, do we want to change? Are we willing to forego some of that to potentially make it somewhere else? Or maybe not.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And even though they had all of the support, allegedly support from people above and their ownership and others, they were incredibly reluctant to do it. So I was sitting in a role where change was in my title, but I couldn't do anything. And I had built up goodwill. I'd got some champion. I was doing everything that change management tells you to do.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Pushing the needle here, scaling your time here. And for the time period that I was there, they were wholly unwilling to take it on. And at a certain point, I had to, you know what, it isn't going to work for me anymore. I'm pushing the rock. I'm ill as whatever the Greek do. And I'm not getting anywhere. And I'm being told two different stories.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
So we dig into it, which might have really been like an external push from other people. So we don't want to do it. And it ended up being a failure for myself. And it's something that I had taken on and I accept. I learned a lot of really good lessons from it. And frankly, I had some work with the wonderful people that were driven to do it.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
But when the entire organization has been dictated change, and not really trusting of the person who's supposed to pilot it, then it's not gonna happen.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
But in this instance, it's a little bit about, it's maybe less about the change addict thing, but learning of how that change grow, if that's a good word or change guide, which is all right, maybe we need to take a step back and figure out what is your definition of change? Is it collectively the same? Do we all think this is a good idea?
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Okay, maybe we need to tailor it a little more specific and then move on from there. And that's hopefully where I am now and how I actually go about it a little bit more. There's a little bit less, less put on the gas, more, let's put the car in park for a second and let's have a talk. We'll drive a block down the road and then we're going to have another talk.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And that way we can get to the kind of, again, change that we're all trying to achieve. And back to that definition of success. It's not just keep that directed by the outside or financial reasons only. The whole way that we're going to evolve and change for the better.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Thank you so much for having me, Vincent. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Fantastic. Thank you, Vince. Happy to. So I'm Colin, as you introduced, Colin Davidge. I am hailing today from the Queen City, which was Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. And so I was born and raised here. I lived here until I was probably just out of the university. And then I left and lived overseas for 20 years. That really isn't that uncommon.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
During the early 90s in Saskatchewan, a lot of people looked for opportunities elsewhere. And even if I look at sort of my high school graduating class, 60-70% of them stayed in their city and went to our local university. Another chunk maybe went to a university nearby or a neighboring province. And a very small bit even left elsewhere in Canada, like you mentioned, Ontario.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
But very few people went further than that. I finished university armed with a great liberal arts degree and a degree in English literature, which obviously at the time when everybody was banging down my door to give me a job, But I needed to go, I needed to go somewhere else. So I left with that degree and with some other experience and decided to test Asia.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
There's a long story and it's all through my LinkedIn profile. People can read it, but I managed to over the 20 years build up what I call seven, seven, 70. So I lived in seven countries. I was seconded to seven others and I worked in project 70 nations around the world. put it up and make it simple for others to follow. There's three threads that go through my background.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
One of them was academics and education. I was heavily involved in my own academic. I studied for three master's degrees in various areas. I worked as a lecturer in universities and countries across Southeast Asia and Japan where I spent almost nine years. Then there was
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
It's more of a business thread, which involved business development, marketing, market research in a number of industries, which all, looking back, link a little bit to each other, but at times were also quite different. Particularly because they also not include just all over the private sector, but also working with government and governments across different countries they lived in.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And then finally, the other thread would probably be something where I would think, and it's more aligned with this podcast almost directly. is strategy and change. While I'm working in industries or moving from one to the other, I noticed that things were evolving.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
An example would be I spent time leading a team of analysts out of London in the UK that focused on telecommunications across the world. So I had a team of 40 people. They were all dedicated and focused on individual countries or market. And they were all coming back to me with similar, but also at times very different analysis of how those markets were changing.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Data was becoming part of what you could put on your mobile phone or you could start searching the internet. And this led me into financial services, where while I was with a quite traditional Japanese major licensure, there was fintech visible. And fintech led to things like regtech, where we're doing regulation.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Through all of these different evolutions and changes, there were little things that led me from one to the other. But also, I'm really honest to say that a little bit of looking in the rear view of the mirror and seeing you afterward. At the time, it was just a lot of change. And I know today, Vince, we're going to talk about something that I mentioned in Change Addict to Change Guru.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
I really was a change addict in a sense. When I left Canada in 1984... I just threw caution to the wind and went. Hit Thailand. I packed the suitcase. I went there. I had no, I knew nothing about the language, culture, the working environment or anything. I not only changed the city I lived in, but the country, the culture, the language, the industry and everything at once.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And that really put me on the path. to do it repeatedly until before I moved back to Canada, I joked to myself that, look, if I change everything at once and I'm addicted to doing that, the only thing I can do next is maybe move to the moon. There's no more I can add into the mix to make it harder on myself.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
So I think full circle, all of the different industries and markets and cultures and countries, roles and people that I've dealt with, you can put a lot of energy into promoting it and encouraging it, but to a point before it gets a little bit dangerous. So hopefully that's a good interview, Vince. If you've got any other questions for me on that, I'd be happy to delve into it.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
I can take up for a whole hour on myself if you want.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Regina is a lovely city. And like I said, I grew up here and I grew up at a time when it was pretty traditional. Most of us looked the same. There wasn't a whole lot of ways to escape it, the right word to use. And so there wasn't a lot of novelty, at least from my perspective. If you wanted to, you could. You grew up here. You went to university. You got a degree in administration.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And we're a government now. So you go work for the government. You find your partner, start a family, and so on. So the path was pretty much laid out. And that really wasn't me. And at the time I didn't know, I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I knew that wasn't the path that I wanted to take.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And so the only thing I could do is basically have my radar on high alert for anything that sort of caught my interest. And that's where I get to the change addict. It's a lot about novelty. Oh, wouldn't it be neat if I moved to Kenya and I worked for a bank? Or wouldn't it be cool if I went to China and I studied? And when I hear people say that, I'm always encouraging them to consider it.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
But the question afterwards is, what thing? For what purpose? If you go and you could study where you live now because of all the opportunities we have and online and the virtual world has made it easy. For example, us today, you're in Hong Kong and I'm in Redona. We're very easily, we can do whatever we want. Well, why do you need, why do you need to go there and do that?
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And if the answer that comes back to a lot of, I don't know, I saw a movie and China looks really neat or, oh, I saw that one person on social media that they did this and they're being super successful. So why wouldn't that be me? And I don't think it's a bad answer. But the reality is that you're going to have a little bit more planning behind it. And I live the addict lifestyle.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Like I said, I moved, picked up and moved to Thailand. And then one day in Thailand, without really teaching English to adults and at the university, I want to go somewhere where there's no Burger King, there's no 7-Eleven, there's no this, there's no that. And I basically walked into her traveling, where can I go that I forward? And she said, go to Myanmar. So I did.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
I went to Myanmar and did nothing about it. Took a suitcase. And then I lived there for a year and a half learning my way. I was there, but looking back, that was just novel. Oh, it's foreign. It's new. It's different. It's unknown. I'll let leap into it and don't do it. And the single person now, anyone can do that, but it didn't really have a purpose in mind.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And the thing is novelty is great, but novelty wears off. You're there for a year and a half, and then you wake up one morning and it happens again. Oh, I'm bored. I've done this. I've learned these things that are really cool and interesting. And okay, let's go move here or let's go try this or let's do whatever.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
The other thing that I might add is that change addict, like whenever you're with some kind of adversity, it takes as much, if not more focus to get through to the end. The lucky thing for me was, well, I've started this degree, I got to finish it. Or I started in this job, I got to be here at least this amount of time.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
I've started learning this language, I've focused at least enough so I can do some kind of benchmark. And it's a lot harder when you have to do that, when it is just chasing novelty. So I think, yeah, like the change addict part, there's a lot of people that will do that. And actually, I'm a little bit different.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
If you start something and it's not for you, you should really just chuck it in and go find the thing that you want. There's opportunity cost, as we all know, right? But if you don't wrap things up or if you don't complete them to a certain extent, later on, I don't really know how you could pull out the value. And as we get into other topics, but maybe you can apply it to more.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
But if you haven't finished it, you're never going to get there. So the way that I came about the concept of change addict, and addict is the harsh word, but you really can be addicted to change and to novelty.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
No, that's a great question, Vince. And I think at the beginning, I thought it would be in hindsight, which is lovely to have. But I think at the time it was, like I mentioned adversity, but, and I also mentioned boredom. For me, like when I didn't have responsibility, right? It's just me. I'm the one that's responsible for myself. I got to feed, clothe, house me.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
There were many times where I was just like, you know what? I'm going to change it and quit my job. And I don't have anything else or I don't really have a plan to do anything else. And I'll just see what happens. And that's dangerous. Yeah.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
there are people that can do it but i don't like it so i'm not going to push through the adversity it's not going to help you later on in life absolutely if you're not happy with where you are and you're not you don't think you're where you can be or you're not being supported the way that you would like then you certainly should look for other avenues and talk to a lot of people and
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Try different things, but you can try different things while you're doing something else that allows you to do that exploration. If you're just doing it because somebody has slighted you. When I was in Myanmar, I just woke up one day and said, I have $300. I'm going to live a very good life, but I'm never going to have anything. If I ever decided to leave here, so why don't I just go?
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
And I was out in a week. But it's not... I could have done it in a much more thoughtful way. And I might be an odd cat in that move to so many places and I've done whatever. Maybe that's not going to be the way of the world in the future. But you only get, I would think, in your life, a bunch of major changes. So you really shouldn't
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
minimize the impact and the importance of the change of the time. Really give yourself some time to think about like, why am I really unhappy? What do I really want to do? I don't know what I want to do. What are some things I can figure out that might lead me? Have I thought in my head and built some scenario planning or I'm like, what's going to happen if we do it? Am I going to regret it?
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
Regret's an awful thing or we're always going to have it. But I think you can minimize it if you've got a little bit of thoughtfulness around why you're leaping to change something. Is it really just today I'm having a bad day and I had a bad interaction? Or is it, you know what, it's been building up for a long time and I shouldn't be here. I need to go find a place in my tribe.
Chief Change Officer
#263 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part One
So I think, yeah, like a lot of those different components are really important for figuring out. Am I addicted to change or am I welcoming of it? And I'm using it at Yule to help me find a better place to rise.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Yeah, and I think, so there's, this is, that's a great question again, Vin, and I did some soul searching in that I have worked in a number of, both the mainstream and on cases of change in a variety of different countries and industries or divisions. Potentially, there's two things I would want to start off with, and there's some misconception, some common misconceptions I see about change.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And again, we're talking like in an organizational or a business or even a personal professional way. And the first one is we have these people and I support them. Embrace change. Embrace change. It's the same thing as like you're embracing change for success. And then how are we defining success? Is it simply a bunch of key performance indicators and some sales bigger than revenue?
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Is it just keeping people? Is it launching ourselves into a brand new space to be wildly successful? Is it keeping the status quo? There's a whole variety of different ways to do it and embracing change to success is fine, but don't do it just for the sake of success. Because the true impact really comes when you are guiding, strategic, and focused change.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And that's a whole different arena with a lot of complicated parameters. And you asked me about some specific examples. So I think I've got two, and I'm going to make them personal to me because change is personal. One example is going to be a bit of a surprise to people because they will have read, potentially, how traditional this country is. And this was Japan.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
So I lived in Japan, as I mentioned, for quite a long time. And then I worked with Japanese organizations or machines for an equally long period. And I found, yes, value and worth put on traditional practice. And that also varies across industry. And lo and behold, I also worked in a very traditional industry, lighting term. But from the outside, it does look like it's stuck.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Practices are the same. They move along. So when I was working for one of these big organizations, album that, yeah, there wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of airtime given to, hey, why don't we try this? Or, hey, why don't we, why don't we consider something completely different? There was incremental change, change or introduction of new things.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And then luck would have it, I ended up traveling to a developing market with senior people from that city and looked around and just started noticing Don. And then thinking, hey, we could connect these Don to make something unique. And with a job in a life insurance company, we're in Brazil, we're seeing something that's a bit unique.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
In Japan, one of the largest minorities are really, and they are people who travel to Japan as youth. They have access to visas and other things, and they start their working life in Japan. So they're actually indoctrinated. They learn working culture from being in Japanese companies, a lot of them, and otherwise. They learn things like, hey, life insurance is important. You need to have it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
The discussion went, how are we going to go build this business idea? And What came about was I learned that change, individual, team, and otherwise, comes from doing a lot of promotion. So Japan is a lot about individual conversations to get support or get direction. Big organizations are great at providing that direction, but often indirectly. You have to be acute to the change.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
So, hey, why don't we consider this? Why don't we do that? But also, it's measured and it's planned change. You can't just come up with an idea and throw it at people and get them to say yes or no. You've got to research your idea. This is the market size. These are the people. This is what they would buy. This is how it would benefit them if they stayed where they are or then when they moved back.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
This is how we could link Dovetail or a pipeline into getting new people in a new market we might make. So it took a lot of time, but I was very surprised and very proud that we actually managed to get this kind of a thing. I got support from lovely people within the organization. They provided their time to me. We moved ahead. It took two years, but the change did happen.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And it was actually a real shining example of just because you think a culture and a group of people are traditional in their practices doesn't mean they're averse to change. You just need to be, again, from that change addict thing we were talking about, Not willy-nilly, not, hey, let's just do it for the sake of doing it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Be measured, be strategic, be researched in what you want to change, and then find the kind and supportive voices. And if you find enough of them, you'll get groundswell and you'll be able to do it. If you don't, maybe your idea really isn't that great. Maybe you need to go back to the ground.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
So learn to take the interest and the novelty and the energy that comes from a potential change and have it fuel you to do the really important things. The fundamental steps to maybe make that change happen. And the flip side would be actually back here in Canada. I work for a quite traditional marketing company. Probably if I tell you who it is, people will know right away.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
They brought me in as a change person. That's how I was recruited. Please come here. We know our industry is on the decline. We're not really entirely sure where to go with it. We've seen what you did in other places. We're eager to change. We want a change. They used all the right words. They were very receptive to the ideas before I moved in-house.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
I got in there and I asked, do you want me to be disruptive? Would you like me to push new initiatives? Absolutely, this is what we want. And within a month of me doing that, we don't really like it. Or that was a little too much. The reality is they were a different kind of ad. They were hooked on a legacy of very high revenue and high profit margin.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And they weren't willing, they really weren't willing, and they hadn't done the time to figure out, do we want to change? Are we willing to forego some of that to potentially make it somewhere else? Or maybe not. And even though they had all of the support, allegedly support from people above and their ownership and others, they were incredibly reluctant to do it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
So I was sitting in a role where change was in my title, but I couldn't do anything. And I had tried, I had built up goodwill. I'd, I'd got some champion. I was doing everything that change management tells you to do, pushing the needle here, take scaling here. And for the time period that I went there, they were wholly unwilling to take it on.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And at a certain point I had to, you know what, it isn't going to work for me. I'm pushing the rock. I'm ill as whatever the Greek do. And I'm not getting anywhere. And I'm being told two different stories. So we dig into it, which might have really been like an external push from other people. So we don't want to do it. And it ended up being a failure for myself.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And it's something that I've taken on and I accept. I learned a lot of really good lessons from it. And frankly, I had some work with some wonderful people that were driven to do it. But when the entire organization has been dictated change, and not really trusting of the person who's supposed to pilot it, then it's not gonna happen.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
But in this instance, it's a little bit about, it's maybe less about the change addict thing, but learning of how that change grow, if that's a good word or change guide, which is all right, maybe we need to take a step back, figure out what is your definition of change? Is it collectively the same? Do we all think this is a good idea?
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Okay, maybe we need to tailor it a little more specific and then move on from there. And that's hopefully where I am now and how I actually go about it a little bit more. There's a little bit less, less put on the gas, more, let's put the car in park for a second and let's have a talk. We'll drive a block down the road and then we're going to have another talk.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And that way we can get to the kind of, again, change that we're all trying to achieve. And back to that definition of success, not to keep that directed by the outside or financial reasons only, the whole way that we're going to evolve and change for the better.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Thank you so much for having me, Vince, and good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Fantastic. Thank you, Vince. Happy to. So I'm Colin, as you introduced, Colin Davidge. I am hailing today from the Queen City, which was Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. And so I was born and raised here. I lived here until I was probably just out of the university. And then I left and lived overseas for 20 years. That really isn't that uncommon.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
During the early 90s in Saskatchewan, a lot of people looked for opportunities elsewhere. And even if I look at sort of my high school graduating class drawings, 60, 70% of them stayed in their city and went to our local university. Another chunk maybe went to a university nearby or a neighboring province. And a very small bit even left and moved elsewhere in Canada, like she mentioned, Ontario.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
But very few people went further than that. I finished university armed with a great liberal arts degree and a degree in English literature, which obviously at the time when everybody was banging down my door to give me a job. But I needed to go, I needed to go somewhere else. So I left with that degree and with some other experience and decided to test Asia.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
There's a long story and it's all through my LinkedIn profile. People can read it, but I managed to, over the 20 years, build up what I call 7-7-70. So I lived in seven countries. I was seconded to seven others, and I worked in Project 70 Nations around the world. put it up and make it simple for others to follow. There's three threads that go through my background.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
One of them was academics and education. I was heavily involved in my own academic. I studied for three master's degrees in various areas. I worked as a lecturer in universities and countries across Southeast Asia and Japan where I spent almost nine years. Then there was
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
It's more of a business thread, which involved business development, marketing, market research in a number of industries, which all, looking back, link a little bit to each other, but at times we're all so different. Particularly because they also not include just all over the private sector, but also working with government and governments across different countries they lived in.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And then finally, the other thread would probably be something where I would think, and it's more aligned with this podcast almost directly, is strategy and change. While I'm working in industries or moving from one to the other, I noticed that things were evolving.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
An example would be, I spent time leading a team of analysts out of London in the UK that focused on telecommunications across the team. So I had a team of 40 people. They were all dedicated and focused on individual countries or market. And they were all coming back to me with similar, but also at times very different analysis of how those markets were changing.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Data was becoming part of what you could put on your mobile phone, or you could start searching the internet. And this led me into financial services where, while I was with quite a traditional Japanese major licensure, there was FinTech visible. And FinTech led to things like RegTech, where we're doing regulation.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Through all of these different evolutions and changes, there were little things that led me from one to the other. But also, I'm really honest to say that a little bit of looking in the rear view of the mirror and seeing it afterwards. At the time, it was just a lot of change. And I know today, Vince, we're going to talk about something that I mentioned in Change Addict to Change Guru.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
I really was a change addict in a sense. When I left Canada in 1994... I just threw caution to the wind and went. Picked Thailand. I packed a suitcase. I went there. I had no, I knew nothing about the language, culture, the working environment or anything. I not only changed the city I lived in, but the country, the culture, the language, the industry and everything at once.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And that really put me on the path. I could do it repeatedly until before I moved back to Canada, I joked to myself that, look, if I change everything at one and I'm addicted to doing that, the only thing I can do next is maybe move to the moon. There's no more I can add into the mix to make it harder on myself.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
So I think full circle, all of the different industries and markets and cultures and countries, roles and people that I've dealt with, you can put a lot of energy into promoting it and encouraging it, but to a point before it gets a little bit dangerous. So hopefully that's a good interview, Vince. If you've got any other questions for me on that, I'd be happy to delve into it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
I could take up for a whole hour on myself if you want.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Regina is a lovely city. And like I said, I grew up here and I grew up at a time when it was pretty traditional. Most of us looked the same. There wasn't a whole lot of ways to escape it, the right word to use. And so there wasn't a lot of novelty, at least from my perspective.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
If you wanted to, you could, you grew up here, you went to university, you got a degree in administration, and we're a government town, so you go work for the government, you find your partner, start a family, and so on. So, the path was pretty much laid out. And that really wasn't me.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And at the time I didn't know, I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I knew that wasn't the path that I wanted to take. And so the only thing I could do is basically have my radar on high alert for anything that sort of caught my interest. And that's where I get to the change addict. It's a lot about novelty. Oh, wouldn't it be neat if I moved to Kenya and I worked for a bank?
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Or wouldn't it be cool if I went to China and I studied? And when I hear people say that, I'm always encouraging them to consider it. But the question afterwards is what thing, for what purpose? If you go and you could study where you live now because of all the opportunities we have and online and the virtual world has made it easy. For example, us today, you're in Hong Kong and I'm in Redona.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
We're very easily, we can do whatever we want. Well, why do you need, why do you need to go there and do that? And if the answer that comes back to a lot of, I don't know, I saw a movie and China looks really neat or, oh, I saw that one person on social media that they do this and they're being super successful. So why wouldn't that be me? And I don't think that's a bad answer.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
But the reality is that you gotta have a little bit more planning behind it. I, and I lived the, the attic lifestyle. Like I said, I, I moved, picked up and moved to Thailand. And then one day in Thailand, without really teaching English to adults and at the university, I wanna go somewhere where there's no Burger King, there's no 7-Eleven, there's no this, there's no that.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And I basically walked into a travel, where can I go? But I forward and she said, go to Myanmar. So I did, I went to Myanmar and did nothing about it, took a suitcase. And then I lived there for a year and a half learning my way. I was there, but looking back, that was just novel. Oh, it's foreign. It's new. It's different. It's unknown. I'll like leap into it and don't do it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And a single person now, anyone can do that, but it didn't really have a purpose in mind. And the thing is novelty is great, but novelty wears off. You're there for a year and a half, and then you wake up one morning and it happens again. Oh, I'm bored now. I've done this. I've learned these things that are really cool and interesting.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And okay, let's go move here or let's go try this or let's do whatever. The other thing that I might add is that change addict, like whenever you're shit with some kind of adversity, it takes as much, if not more time. focus to get through to the end. The lucky thing for me was, well, I've started this degree, I gotta finish it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
Or I started in this job, I gotta be here at least this amount of time. Or I've started learning this language, I gotta focus at least enough so I can do some kind of benchmark. And it's a lot, it's a lot harder when you have to do that, when it is just chasing novelty. So I think, yeah, like the change addict part, there's a lot of people that will do that.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And actually, I'm a little bit different. If you start something and it's not for you, you should really just chuck it in and go find the thing that you want. There's opportunity cost, as we all know, right? But if you don't wrap things up or if you don't complete them to a certain extent, later on, I don't really know how you could pull out the value.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And as we get into other topics, like maybe you can apply it teamwork, but if you haven't finished it, you're never going to get there. So the way that I came about the concept of change addict and addict is the harsh word, but you really can be to change and to novel.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
No, that's a great question, Vince. And I think, again, I thought it would be in hindsight, which is lovely to have. But I think at the time it was, like I mentioned adversity, but, and I also mentioned boredom. For me, like when I didn't have responsibility, right? It's just me. I'm the one that's responsible for myself. I got to feed, clothe, house me.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
There were many times where I was just like, you know what? I'm going to change it and quit my job. And I don't have anything else or I don't really have a plan to do anything else. And I'll just see what happens. And that's dangerous. There are people that can do it. but I don't like it. So I'm not going to push through the adversity. It's not going to help you later on in life. Absolutely.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
If you're not happy with where you are and you're not, you don't think you're where you can be or you're not being supported the way that you would like, then you certainly should look for other avenues and talk to a lot of people and try different things. But you can try different things while you're doing something else that allows you to do that exploration. Yeah.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
If you're just doing it because somebody has slighted you. When I was in Myanmar, I just woke up one day and said, I have $300. I'm going to live a very good life, but I'm never going to have anything. If I ever decided to leave here, so why don't I just go? And I was out in a week. But it's not... I could have done it in a much more thoughtful way.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
And I might be an odd cat in that move to so many places and I've done whatever. Maybe that's not going to be the way of the world in the future. But you only get, I would think, in your life a bunch of major changes. So you really shouldn't. minimize the impact and the importance of the change of the time. Really give yourself some time to think about like, why am I really unhappy?
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
What do I really want to do? I don't know what I want to do. What are some things I can figure out that might lead me? Have I thought in my head and built some scenario planning or I'm like, what's going to happen if we do it? Am I going to regret it? Regret's an awful thing or we're always going to have it.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
But I think you can minimize it if you've got a little bit of thoughtfulness around why you're leaping to change something. Is it really just today I'm having a bad day and I had a bad interaction? Or is it, you know what, it's been building up for a long time and I shouldn't be here. I need to go find a place in my tribe.
Chief Change Officer
#170 Colin Savage: Change Junkie on a Global Tour—Swapping Comfort for Chaos – Part One
So I think, yeah, like a lot of those different components are really important for figuring out. Am I addicted to change or am I welcoming of it? And I'm using it at Yule to help me find a better place to rise.